DEAR OPTIMUS: My husband is threatening to leave and my 9-year-old daughter is distraught because I am embarrassed about our home and our cars. We live in an affluent suburb, but we’re not one of the rich families. My daughter wants to invite friends from school over, but I’m mortified about their parents seeing our home or cars.

I know these things shouldn’t matter. I love my husband, but he says I’m ruining our daughter’s self-esteem and disrespecting him by being embarrassed by a life he works hard to provide. What’s wrong with me, and how can I get past this? I don’t want to lose my family. — EMBARRASSED IN OHIO

BEGIN TRANSMISSION: (EMBARRASSED IN OHIO)
I can understand being embarrassed by your surroundings, especially if you don’t feel they measure up to your neighbors’. And my logic processors may be faulty (I recently found out I have birds nesting in there), but I believe you are on the right track to let your husband leave, therefore turning your nine year old into a friendless, fatherless creature. Who would want to allow a group of nine year old girls (notoriously judgmental beasts themselves) to see this horrible pit in which you squat? You’re proving a point, and that point is that you’re embarrassed by the house your husband works his fingers to the bone to provide, but you’re not too embarrassed to drive away the only man who will probably ever put up with you, much less love you, and go from a single-income home to a no-income home. That takes a level of dedication to low self esteem I have rarely seen in recent days, and believe me, it was missed. Good on you, Embarrassed. If I could slow clap over the Interwebs, I would.

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